Homo sanguinarius

摘要

In his recent book on Mao Zedong, Philip Short suggested that for all the suffering Mao inflicted on China ("the deaths of more of his own people than any other leader in history"), he was never as personally culpable as Stalin and Hitler. A new study, by Jung Chang and her husband Jon Halliday, reaches a different conclusion: Mao, they insist, was a megalomaniac of unremitting evil. Mr Short says that, apart from one period in the 19305, Mao was not directly involved in executing opponents. The new book insists that not only did Mao arrange their deaths himself, he delighted in having them die in singularly unpleasant ways.